Born with a very poor sense of direction, I have been lost and terrified too many times to remember. I’ve been stranded in an African game reserve, an Indonesian forest and the back streets of Marrakech and Lamu. I’ve been unable to find my way back to my tent at festivals and have misplaced my car in supermarket or airport carparks. For me, an addressing system that can guide you precisely to absolutely any spot in the world, from a mountain peak to a market stall in a township, would represent a godsend, and the good news is that I’ve discovered it already exists.

what3words has mapped the entire world, dividing it into 57 trillion three-metre squares, each with its unique definition of just three words. Type in ///sound.manual.lungs and you’ll arrive at Buckingham Palace’s front gate. ///shut.tech.requests will lead you to the Eiffel Tower, and ///snake.remove.gymnast to the top of Uluru/Ayers Rock. Just 40,000 words were needed to create trillions of unique combinations – and the system is now available in over 50 languages, including many indigenous ones.

The business was founded in 2013, by Chris Sheldrick, Mohan Ganesalingam, Jack Waley-Cohen and Michael Dent. Sheldrick remains at the helm and explains the inspiration behind it. ‘I worked as a music manager, and the logistics of moving crews, musicians and equipment around was a constant headache. People were lost all the time,’ he says. ‘Take a venue like the O2 arena with so many different entrances. I’d have trucks all over the place unsure where to go. Every entrance really needed its own address. Then I began thinking about growing up in a Hertfordshire village without a house name. So, I got together with Mohan, a mathematician friend, who came up with an algorithm to map the world in three-word combinations in six months.’

Take-up was swift. Mongolia’s postal service was one of the first to sign up, allowing many in the vast country to take delivery of letters for the first time. Others followed fast, from Domino’s Pizza’s Global Online Ordering to DHL, DPD and Hermes. The Royal Mail uses it to deliver by drone to outlying Scottish islands, and LonelyPlanet to locate destinations in its guidebooks. The RNIB has embraced it and various London events and big locations – Winter Wonderland, Alexandra Palace, the London Marathon – use it so people can find meeting points.

Now the automotive industry is signing up to it, led by Mercedes. The all-electric carmaker VinFast followed, alongside Mitsubishi, Subaru, Lamborghini and Jaguar Land Rover. ‘Eventually we’ll be on every single navigation system,’ says Sheldrick, ‘and everyone will get into their cars, say three words and be navigated to exactly the right three-metre spot.’

The AA is using it, Geoloc 18-112 in France uses it to aid fire services and BVG India Limited to support the Maharashtra ambulance service. It enables water pipes to be laid in Haiti and solar solutions to be installed across Africa. It helped restore telecoms following thousands being displaced by the 2016 Ecuadorian earthquake, and in the same year enabled the Philippine Red Cross to distribute aid after Typhoon Haima. Even beyond its application for emergencies and disasters, the social benefits are potentially life-changing. In 2016, UN-Habitat reported that there were a billion informal settlement and slum dwellers worldwide, a figure expected to increase threefold by 2050. As a documentary filmmaker, I worked in favelas, slums and townships, so I know how bewildering they are to navigate. Having no address represents far more than an irritation, cutting off homes and small businesses alike from essential and emergency services.

So now what3words is being snapped up by NGOs, making life easier for millions, like those living in the Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement in Uganda, by providing every home, church and mosque with three words. Gateway Health Institute, a Durban-based NGO, is using it to change lives in KwaNdengezi, an informal settlement in one of the poorest provinces in South Africa, with a population of around 54,000 people in 11,000 homes, from solid brick buildings to makeshift, self-built shacks, all loosely connected by poor, unlit dirt roads. Over a quarter of people living there have no access to piped water and the area has a high incidence of HIV and Aids, TB and childhood malnutrition. From a midwife being able to locate a woman in labour to delivering products to small businesses, it’s providing major, often life-saving, benefits for residents.

The economist Hernando de Soto said, ‘Without an address, you live outside the law. You might as well not exist.’ what3words is set to change all that, three words at a time.

what3words.com